Design and Advanced Materials As a Driver of Innovation

One of the main remaining barriers is the lack of knowledge of the potential use of advanced materials in designing new products. Danish Design Centre has partnered up with FAD in Barcelona and Happy Materials in Prague on the EU-project DAMADEI – “Design and Advanced Materials As a Driver of European Innovation”. The project that runs till Ultimo October seeks to put focus on European competitiveness.

It also aims to raise awareness among designers and to provide them with the appropriate experience on how to take advantage of the huge opportunities regarding these advanced materials.

Output

Besides consolidating a long-term collaborative European infrastructure to enhance the current network of partners through the involvement of the main European design sector and advanced materials stakeholders DAMADEI also aims to identify the needs, barriers and common areas of applications of both sectors as well as developing the potential interaction of Design and Advanced Materials as drivers of European innovation.



As a part of this 4 workshops (London 1st March, Copenhagen 22nd April, Prague 28nd May and Barcelona 8th July) will be hold to stimulate creative processes by exchanging European best practices in design through the application of advanced materials.

Following these four workshops the exhibition ‘MATERIALSM EUROPEAN TOUR’ has been created. The exhibition that is curated by the partners of DAMADEI, aims to educate and to inspire the creative industries with 40+ advanced materials chosen from the material families that are driving today´s innovations:

Active materials, Nano materials, Advanced manufacturing, High performance polymers, Light alloys, Gels & Foams, Coatings, Advanced composites, Advanced textiles and Fibres.

At last but not least – and based on the DAMADEI’s mapping of the European Design and Advanced Materials sectors – a collaborative platform with an online database and meeting point for Design and Advanced Materials is being created. his platform will give any user the possibility to search European actors of advanced materials within suppliers, designers, technology centres and connecting centres in nine different material categories.

Advanced Materials

An advanced material is any material that, through the precise control of its composition and internal structure, features a series of exceptional properties (mechanical, electrical, optical, magnetic properties, etc) or functionalities (self-repairing, shape change, decontamination, transformation of energy, etc) that differentiate it from the rest of the universe of materials; or any that, when transformed through advanced manufacturing techniques, features such properties or functionalities.